If we're thinking about how we might best help the children of our society, especially children at risk, there is good reason to think about pre-school. Research has repeatedly shown that high quality pre-school in children at risk has profound impact on the quality of their later lives. When we've tried to implement this principle broadly we've had modest success. "Head Start" and "No Child Left Behind" have not been judged successful. The failure of these programs may well be that we set a goal and then failed to adequately fund it and failed to draw the kinds of teachers that could make it work. Pre-school teachers are not well paid and we don't draw the level of talent needed to make pre-school work well. Another consideration for someone judging where to give their attention is that the formal public school system is highly developed and hard to impact. Pre-school, on the other hand, is not so highly developed and probably easier for making a difference. Here's how David Brooks describes the opportunity.

Children who've developed good brain functions by age 3 have advantages that accumulate through life. They not only possess skills that can be measured on tests, they have self-discipline (which is twice as important as I.Q. in predicting academic achievement, according to a study by Angela Duckworth and Martin Seligman). How can we inculcate good brain functions across a wider swath of the 3-year-old population ? Getting this right is tricky. Head Start produces only modest benefits, as a study from the Department of Health and Human Services has reminded us again. Small, intensive preschool programs yield tremendous results, but realistically, they cannot be done on a giant scale.

The problem is this: How can we provide millions of kids with the stable, loving structures they may not be getting sufficiently at home ?

If there's one thing that leaps out of all the brain literature, it is that, as Daniel J. Siegel puts it, "emotion serves as a central organizing process within the brain." Kids learn from people they love. If we want young people to develop the social and self-regulating skills they need to thrive, we need to establish stable long-term relationships between love-hungry children and love-providing adults. (text from editorial by Of Love and Money David Brooks, New York Times, May 25, 2006).

Read David Brook's editorial and other article among the "resources" below